Religion Law Commons^™

God Is My Roommate? Tax Exemptions For Parsonages Yesterday, Today, And (If Constitutional) Tomorrow, Samuel D. Brunson

Faculty Publications & Other Works

In 2019, the Seventh Circuit decided an Establishment Clause question that had been percolating through the courts for two decades. It held that the parsonage allowance, which permits “ministers of the gospel” to receive an untaxed housing allowance, does not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. It grounded its conclusion in part on the “historical significance” test the Supreme Court established in its Town of Greece v. Galloway decision.

In coming to that conclusion, the Seventh Circuit cited a 200-year unbroken history of property tax exemptions for religious property. According to the Seventh Circuit, that history demonstrated that both …

Debating Diya: Indirect Rule And The Transformation Of Islamic Law In British Colonial Northern Nigeria, Rabiat Akande

All Papers

Leading academic authority on British imperial governance, Dame Margery Perham famously made the above remark on the workings of indirect rule in Northern Nigeria—the colonial state resulting from the 1903 British conquest of the West African Sokoto Caliphate. First emerging on the heels of the 1857 mutiny in British India, British colonial indirect rule had a long and checkered history predating its arrival in Nigeria. The dominant understanding of the Indian rebellion was that of a revolt against empire’s anglicizing project with the consequence that it spurred the colonial state to turn to governing colonial populations through native institutions within …

Heaven Or Earth: The Hagia Sophia Re-Conversion, Turkish And International Law, And The Special Case Of Universal Religious Sites, Michael Goodyear

Articles & Chapters

The Hagia Sophia has stood as one of the greatest religious buildings in the world for nearly 1,500 years. During this time, the structure was a church and then a mosque, before finally becoming a museum in 1934. But in July 2020, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, re-converted the Hagia Sophia to a mosque following a ruling by the Turkish Council of State. The re-conversion was received with outrage across much of the world, but whether the decision was legal poses a much more difficult question.

This article analyzes Turkish domestic law and international law to conclude that there …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Is This A Christian Nation? An Introduction, Carl T. Bogus

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Secular Invocations, The First Amendment, And The Promise Of Religious Pluralism, Jay Wexler

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Who Conquers With This Sign? The Significance Of The Secularization Of The Bladensburg Cross, Mary Anne Case

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

No, It Is Not A Christian Nation, And It Never Has Been And Should Not Be One, Erwin Chemerinsky

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Framers, Faith, And Tyranny, Marci A. Hamilton

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Wall Between A Secular Government And A Religious People, John A. Ragosta

Roger Williams University Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Is Caesar's, What Is God's: Fundamental Public Policy For Churches, Lloyd Histoshi Mayer, Zachary B. Pohlman

Journal Articles

Bob Jones University v. United States is both a highly debated Supreme Court decision and a rarely applied one. Its recognition of a contrary to fundamental public policy doctrine that could cause an otherwise tax-exempt organization to lose its favorable federal tax status remains highly controversial, although the Court has shown no inclination to revisit the case and Congress has shown no desire to change the underlying statutes to alter the case’s result. That lack of action may be in part because the IRS applies the decision in relatively rare and narrow circumstances.
/="/">
/="/">The mention of the decision …

The Talmudic Prisoner's Dilemma, Uri Weiss

Touro Law Review

We argue that there is a stream in the Talmud that attributes the responsibility to one player alone in the case of a joint crime/joint tort and even in dividing the credits for a joint Mitzvah. We used the game theory to investigate which incentives are provided by this approach, which games are created, which games are blocked, and to which results this approach leads. In this paper, we present some Talmudic games.

Although in Jewish law, a sinner cannot be a witness, one Talmudic rabbi proposes a rule that, in the case of a joint crime, one of …

In Bad Faith: Anti-Sharia Laws, The Constitution, And The Limits Of Religious Freedom, Isabelle Canaan

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Religious Roots Of Corporate Organization, Amanda Porterfield

Seattle University Law Review

Religion and corporate organization have developed side-by-side in Western culture, from antiquity to the present day. This Essay begins with the realignment of religion and secularity in seventeenth-century America, then looks to the religious antecedents of corporate organization in ancient Rome and medieval Europe, and then looks forward to the modern history of corporate organization. This Essay describes the long history behind the entanglement of business and religion in the United States today. It also shows how an understanding of both religion and business can be expanded by looking at the economic aspects of religion and the religious aspects of …

Rethinking Protections For Indigenous Sacred Sites, Stephanie H. Barclay, Michalyn Steele

Journal Articles

Meaningful access to sacred sites is among the most important principles to the religious exercise of Indigenous peoples, yet tribes have been repeatedly thwarted by the federal government in their efforts to vindicate this practice of their religion. The colonial, state, and federal governments of this Nation have been desecrating and destroying Native American sacred sites since before the Republic was formed. Unfortunately, the callous destruction of Indigenous sacred sites is not just a troubling relic of the past. Rather, the threat to sacred sites and cultural resources continues today in the form of spoliation from development, as well as …

Book Review: The Cambridge Companion To The First Amendment And Religious Liberty, Nathan Chapman

Scholarly Works

Review of The Cambridge Companion to The First Amendment and Religious Liberty. Edited by Michael D. Breidenbach and Owen Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xii + 461 pp. $39.99 paper.

Living The Sacred: Indigenous Peoples And Religious Freedom, Kristen A. Carpenter

Publications

No abstract provided.

Civil Disobedience In Latter-Day Saint Thought, Nathan B. Oman

Faculty Publications

The twelfth article of faith declares, “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law” (A of F 1:12). On its face, this statement seems to be an unqualified acceptance of legal authority, one that would suggest that Latter-day Saints ought to shun civil disobedience. However, a closer look at Restoration scripture, teachings, and experience reveals a more complicated picture. To be sure, law-abidingness has long been central to the Saints’ identity, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and like the New Testament, Restoration scripture generally accepts the need to …

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …

The Virginia Company To Chick-Fil-A: Christian Business In America, 1600–2000, Joseph P. Slaughter

Seattle University Law Review

This Article argues that the proprietors of what the author terms “Christian Business Enterprises” (CBEs) would strenuously disagree with Justice Ginsburg and assert that their express mission is to earn a profit while propagating their religious values. As such, they operate businesses “infused with religion,” where Christian values are interwoven into the very fabric of the company and how the firm relates to its stakeholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and communities.

This Article further demonstrates the rich heritage of religious for-profit businesses throughout American history by focusing on a series of Protestant CBEs that led to today’s CBE giants: Chick-fil-A and …